Lida, Raimundo (1908–1979)

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Lida, Raimundo (1908–1979)

Raimundo Lida (b. 15 November 1908; d. 20 June 1979), Argentine literary scholar. Born in Lemberg, Austria (Lvov, Poland), Lida arrived with his family in Argentina at the age of two and was educated at the University of Buenos Aires, as a student of Amado Alonso and Pedro Henríquez Ureña. His literary scholarship represented the best of the philological tradition, while displaying a strong interest in aesthetics, philosophy of language, and newer critical methodologies. Lida became secretary of the Institute of Philology at the University of Buenos Aires under the directorship of Alonso. In 1948 Alfonso Reyes appointed him director of the Center of Linguistic and Literary Studies of the Colegio de México, where he also became the founding managing editor of the Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica (NRFH). Lida's distinguished career as professor at Harvard University began in 1953; in 1968 he became Smith Professor of Romance Languages. His Letras hispánicas: Estudios, esquemas (1958) is a collection of essays on philosophy, Latin American literature (Rubén Darío, Gabriela Mistral, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others), and the prose works of Francisco de Quevedo, to which he dedicated much of his scholarly career. Nine of his later articles on Quevedo were collected posthumously as Prosas de Quevedo (1981). NRFH published a special issue titled Homenaje a Raimundo Lida (vol. 24, no. 1) in 1975. Known for his scholarly precision in addressing historical contexts and stylistic questions, and for the economy and subtle wit of his own critical style, Lida placed great emphasis on his role as mentor to several generations of Hispanists who shaped U.S. scholarship on the literature of medieval and early modern Spain and present-day Latin America.

See alsoAlonso, Amado .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ana María Barrenechea, "Bibliografía de Raimundo Lida," in Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 24, no 1 (1975): v-x; "En Memoria de Raimundo Lida," in Revista Iberoamericana 46, no. 112-113 (July-December 1980): 517-521.

Jorge Guillén, "Raimundo Lida," in Insula: Revista Bibliográfica de Ciencias y Letras 36, no. 421 (December 1981): 1, 3.

Iris M. Zavala, "Las letras hispánicas de Raimundo Lida (1908–1979)," in Insula: Revista Bibliográfica de Ciencias y Letras 36, no. 421 (December 1981): 4-5.